Fwd: Kshama: Patience

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Hare Krsna. Kshama: PatienceThe fifth yama, patience, or kshama, is as essential to the spiritual pathas the spiritual path is to itself. Impatience is a sign of desirousnessto fulfill unfulfilled desires, having no time for any interruptionsor delays from anything that seems irrelevant to what one really wantsto accomplish.We must restrain our desires by regulating our life with daily worshipand meditation. Daily worship and meditation are difficult to accomplishwithout a break in continuity. However, impatience and frustrationcome automatically in continuity, day after day, often at the sametime--being impatient before breakfast because it is not served ontime, feeling intolerant and abusive with children because they arenot behaving as adults, and on and on. Everything has its timing andits regularity in life. Focusing on living in the eternity of the momentovercomes impatience. It

produces the feeling that one has nothing to do,no future to work toward and no past to rely on. This excellent spiritualpractice can be performed now and again during the day by anyone.Patience is having the power of acceptance, accepting people, acceptingevents as they are happening. One of the great spiritual powers thatpeople can have is to accept things as they are. That forestallsimpatience and intolerance. Acceptance is developed in a person byunderstanding the law of karma and in seeing God Siva and His workeverywhere, accepting the perfection of the timing of the creation,preservation and absorption of the entire universe. Acceptance doesnot mean being resigned to one's situation and avoiding challenges. Weknow that we ourselves created our own situation, our own challenges,in a former time by sending forth our energies, thoughts, words anddeeds. As these energies, on their cycle-back, manifest through

people,happenings and circumstances, we must patiently deal with the situation,not fight it or try to avoid it or be discouraged because of it. Thisis kshama in the raw. This is pure kshama. Patience cannot be acquiredin depth in any other way. This is why meditation upon the truths ofthe Sanatana Dharma is so important.It is also extremely important to maintain patience withoneself--especially with oneself. Many people are masters of thefaçade of being patient with others but take their frustrations out onthemselves. This can be corrected and must be corrected for spiritualunfoldment to continue through an unbroken routine of daily worship andmeditation and a yearly routine of attending festivals and of pilgrimage,tirthayatra.Most people today are intolerant with one another and impatient with theircircumstances. This breeds an irreverent attitude. Nothing is sacred tothem, nothing holy. But through daily

exercising anger, malice and theother lower emotions, they do, without knowing, invoke the demonic forcesof the Narakaloka. Then they must suffer the backlash: have nightmares,confusions, separations and even perform heinous acts. Let all peopleof the world restrain themselves and be patient through the practice ofdaily worship and meditation, which retroactively invokes the divineforces from the Devaloka. May a great peace pervade the planet as thewell-earned result of these practices.The next time you find yourself becoming impatient, just stop for amoment and remember that you are on the upward path, now facing a rareopportunity to take one more step upward by overcoming these feelings,putting all that you have previously learned into practice. Onedoes not progress on the spiritual path by words, ideas or unusedknowledge. Memorized precepts, shlokas, all the shoulds and should-nots,are good, but unless used

they will not propel you one inch further thanyou already are. It is putting what you have learned into practice inthese moments of experiencing impatience and controlling it throughcommand of your spiritual will, that moves you forward. These stepsforward can never be retracted. When a test comes, prevail.Sadhakas and sannyasins must be perfect in kshama, forbearing with peopleand patient under all circumstances, as they have harnessed their karmasof this life and the lives before, compressed them to be experienced inthis one lifetime. There is no cause for them, if they are to succeed,to harbor intolerance or experience any kind of impatience with peopleor circumstances. Their instinctive, intellectual nature should becaught up in daily devotion, unreserved worship, meditation and deepself-inquiry. Therefore, the practice, niyama, that mitigates intoleranceis devotion, Ishvarapujana, cultivating devotion through

daily worshipand meditation.

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